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Salad

Salad Dressing with Butter

A creamy salad dressing made with butter, flour, milk, vinegar, eggs, mustard, salt, sugar, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Salad Dressing with Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth, being careful not to brown.

  3. Add the milk and boil over hot water.

  4. In a bowl, beat the eggs, salt, pepper, and mustard together, then add the vinegar.

  5. Combine this mixture with the first mixture and stir until it thickens like soft custard, about five minutes.

Cool and store

  1. Set aside to cool, then bottle and refrigerate.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the dressing and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk base into a smooth sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens as it heats.
Eggs
Set when heated, thickening the dressing into a custard-like texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tangy flavour.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps the dressing taste bright.

The step that matters

Stir the egg mixture into the hot base until it thickens. Egg proteins set with gentle heat and thicken the sauce, but if the mixture overheats or is stirred too little it can curdle or stay thin. Stirring steadily keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, sugar, pepper, milk, vinegar, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, pepper, milk, vinegar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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